From Hygeia To the Garden City

Abstract

The rapid and widespread acceptance of germ theories of disease among domestic sanitarians during the 1870s—1980s was one of the roots of Progressivism. Their work as so-called house doctors helped shift reform from a moral to a social environmentalism. Germ theories of invisible microbes dissolved the boundaries between inside and outside the body, home, and city. Reformers gave less attention to changing destructive personal behavior and more to ameliorating harmful environmental conditions. In Manchester, a son of its worst slum of Ancoats, Charles Rowley, led a successful grassroots campaign for “healthy lives, healthy homes, and healthy surroundings.” Town hall became involved in removing substandard dwellings, redesigning neighborhoods, and building housing estates in the suburbs. Yet the limits of reform were soon reached when these projects challenged the private housing market. Environmental conditions improved and mortality rates went down, but the slums remained in place at the outbreak of the Great War.